Stapleton residents are embracing a new city with old urban charms

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

By Christopher Montgomery
Plain Dealer Reporter

Denver — To see Denver’s Stapleton project today is to see the birth of a city.

The southeastern portion is a massive construction zone, teeming with trucks and contractors, filled by day with the sounds of hammers, drills, saws and nail guns. On dirt lots alongside freshly paved or unfinished streets are row upon row of new houses, some nearly finished, some plywood skeletons. Scattered around are trash bins, rolls of sod and portable toilets.

From here, Stapleton is indistinguishable from the suburban subdivisions it was designed to outshine. But just to the west, in a finished part of the project, you can see the vision beginning to take shape.

Residents started arriving in the summer of 2002. Their numbers have swelled to 5,000. So far, about 300 apartments and 1,850 homes have been completed. Prices range from about $100,000 for a condominium to more than $1 million.

Two charter schools and a public elementary school are open. A second public school is under construction. Ground was recently broken for a fire station. Several parks are already finished. The centerpiece of the park system — the 80-acre Central Park — will be done in 2007.

The first things that jump out at you in the finished parts of Stapleton are how tightly packed the houses are and how close they sit to the sidewalk. Stapleton takes its cues from old Denver neighborhoods, similar in many ways to parts of Cleveland and its first-ring suburbs. It’s laid out in a grid, with no cul-de-sacs and few winding streets. It incorporates such urban hallmarks as alleys, parkways, tree lawns and a variety of architectural styles.

In profile, the houses present a jumble of variously pitched gables, dormers and eaves. Each house has something that catches your eye — wide-tapered box columns, an accent window, spindlework brackets or the angled bays of row homes.

The trees are still too short, the sidewalks a little too neat and clean, but parts of Stapleton look a lot like the plans laid out in the vision-shaping Green Book produced a decade ago.

In the evenings, it becomes a stroller city as families head out for walks with children and dogs.

About three-quarters of Stapleton’s residents moved from elsewhere in the region. Many are young families who came from old neighborhoods in the city, where houses are smaller and it’s expensive to expand.

Tom Jansen, a 31-year-old civil engineer, said he and his wife, Molly, were swayed by Stapleton’s charm. They moved in with their two young children in late 2003.

“I would have liked to have had a bigger yard, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker,” he said. “We really liked the front porch. And the alleys, they really draw out the character of the houses. In a lot of places, three-car garages are all you see.”